China has so far failed to achieve an overt military foothold in the Pacific, but is pursuing a long-term geopolitical strategy. Stephen Hoadley looks at what Western partners must do to ensure the inevitable rivalry remains balanced and rule-abiding.
Comment: The surprise visit by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi to eight Pacific island countries in May has stimulated intense debate amongst media and academic analysts. Views divide between those emphasising the benefits of Oceania’s trade and economic cooperation with China on the one hand and those stressing the risks of China’s geopolitical challenge on the other.
It is useful to recall that China has a long history of engagement with island countries. For many years this has been accepted by Western officials, even welcomed, as benign and legitimate. For example, China was the second government, after New Zealand, to establish a diplomatic post in Samoa upon that country’s independence in 1962. China’s aid projects soon followed.
To date, China is credited with providing Samoa with two sports complexes, seven schoolhouses, and half a dozen government buildings. In May, Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Mata’afa had no hesitation in welcoming Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his delegation and in signing new agreements for further technical and cultural cooperation. In her eyes, and those of many Pacific elites, China’s aid has been beneficial.
Meanwhile, Sydney’s Lowy Institute has documented the steady rise of China’s aid to the islands. Australian strategic analysts have posed alarming scenarios of Chinese military bases interdicting trade routes and cutting Oceania off from its traditional partners in Asia and the Americas.
However, depending on what is counted as ‘aid’ (excluding loans or private contracts or trade), China provides less than 10 percent of total aid to the region, behind Australia and New Zealand and marginally ahead of France, Japan, and the US. It is disappointing that some Pacific leaders have accused Western partners of ’neglect’, implying that China will deliver more aid than Western partners. This belief confuses promised quantity with reliable quality.
To be fair, the focus of the two ‘sides’ are complementary: China excels at infrastructure while Western aid agencies focus on social, educational and technical capacity-building. Both negotiate aid (and diplomatic, business and resource access) with the host island governments, which remain sovereign and nominally equal at all times.
However, the legitimate rivalry for influence may entail increasing risks due to the contrasting aims, values and methods of the rivals. Western aid is aimed at stabilising host economies and polities, and maintaining international boundaries and power balances, within the post-World War II geopolitical framework. The former colonial powers expect to sustain their traditional spheres of influence. Their aid is project-focused, negotiated in detail, carefully monitored for outcomes, and audited to minimise inefficiency, misuse, or misappropriation. It is conditional and bureaucratised.
China’s aid, in contrast, is aimed to enhance China’s influence in pursuit of the ‘China Dream’ of ‘National Rejuvenation’ (to quote President Xi Jingping). Aid relations advance China’s interests by enhancing access to resources, rallying diplomatic partners against Taiwan and the US, and (as warned Australian critics) facilitating PLA Navy logistics and intelligence-gathering outreach and open-ocean deployment to outflank the US Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. In sum, while the West wishes to stabilise the current geopolitical balance, China aspires to tilt that balance in its favour.
Furthermore, China’s infrastructural aid projects are heavy on made-in-China design, materials, labour, and execution. They are often not appropriate to diminutive Pacific island settings in scale or long-term physical, fiscal, social or environmental sustainability. They are often financed by loans, not grants. Executed by state corporations which are encouraged but not carefully monitored by Beijing, they are less transparent than rigorously supervised and audited Western projects.
Opportunities are rife for malfeasance in the Chinese delivery system and ‘legal bribery’ of host officials. To inattentive, overworked, ambitious or unscrupulous officials these faults make China’s aid more attractive than the more accountable and demanding Western aid projects.
So the risks posed by China’s growing presence in the Pacific islands go beyond the threat of ‘debt traps’, resource despoliation by China’s irresponsible state corporation loggers and miners, and subsidised and militarised fishing fleets, and establishment of military surveillance and logistics installations in the Pacific islands. The additional risk lies in the undermining of the principle of transparent, pluralistic and representative democracy that the region has so far enjoyed (with temporary exceptions such as the Fiji coups). The concern is that unscrupulous leaders will be tempted, and maybe corrupted, by China’s easy funding and security support to unconstitutionally prolong their tenure in power, thus jeopardising their hitherto democratic systems.
A scenario of subversion of democratic processes is playing out in Solomon Islands. Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in 2021 defied the wishes of his Malaita constituents to retain Taiwan as Solomon Islands’ diplomatic partner, switched links to China, accepted unaccountable Provinces Development Fund money from Beijing, which he then doled out to 35 MPs in return for their vote of confidence in Parliament, excluding the other 25 MPs in opposition. In the view of his critics, he ignored development needs in favour of retaining office by means of political bribery.
Furthermore, in April 2022 Sogavare signed an agreement (still officially secret, but leaked by the opposition and published by The Australian newspaper) for Chinese police and military deployment to protect him and Chinese assets and nationals from violence arising from popular discontent and public demonstrations, in short, to keep him in power against the wishes of the Solomon Islands citizenry. This is the model agreement that Wang Yi attempted to negotiate with other Pacific island leaders during his May 2022 visits to eight Pacific island countries. To their credit, the island leaders demurred. While China succeeded in negotiating new aid projects, these were traditional in nature with few evident security or political implications. They exemplified acceptably benign engagement and legitimate (although asymmetric) rivalry with traditional Western donors.
China continues its long-standing (and legal, mostly) policies of building influence relations in the Pacific Islands. In response, Australia with its Pacific Step-up, New Zealand with its Pacific Reset, and the United States with its Indo-Pacific Strategy have promised enhanced aid and diplomatic engagement, thus acknowledging the challenge posed by China’s initiatives. Last century’s benign engagement has now morphed into this century’s legitimate rivalry; but deterioration into covert militarisation by means of fishing logistics facilities and electronic reconnaissance stations remains a future possibility.
China has so far failed to achieve an overt military foothold in the region, but is pursuing a long-term geopolitical strategy and will try again. The Western partners have no option but to match their rhetoric with actions and resources to ensure that the inevitable rivalry with China remains balanced and rule-abiding. It is in the interest of all responsible parties that Pacific governments remain democratic and open to their traditional benefactors even as they cautiously welcome China as a new partner.
